


Duermevela

by HiHereAmI



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Hades!Hunk, Hunk (Voltron) is so Pure, Old Married Couple, Persephone!Pidge, Team Punk Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 02:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19098382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiHereAmI/pseuds/HiHereAmI
Summary: “How many will you take?”“As much as I can give”*A greek mythology AU written for the Team Punk Zine on January 2019





	Duermevela

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pepper_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepper_writes/gifts), [rov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rov/gifts).



> This one goes for my Team Punk Zine children, all of you who stood by us mods and kept the hype up, kept the patience and, most important, kept the love. This one goes for Soop and their drawings, main inspiration of this piece. This one goes to my fellow mods, who kept the machinery afloat. We did it, you guys!  
> Thanks to Bo (zizzani/dreamwips) who beta'ed this against clockwork after I shouted in her inbox about writing almost 3k on a five hour bus ride.

 

_duermevela (from spanish): the state between wake and slumber_

 

Queen of the Underworld.

That’s her title now. Pidge mentally embraces it while tending her forget-me-nots and quietly remembers all the steps that took her down this path.

She wasn’t kidnapped — of course she wasn’t. Whoever thinks otherwise is a fool — both for believing Hunk would dare to do something like that and for daring to even _think_ Pidge wouldn’t deck him the second he tried.

Oh, but would that kind of fool believe the truth? That her husband — _husband_ , Pidge bites back the soppy smile in her face at the thought— met her while trying to garden?

And, okay, Pidge likes her plants. She isn’t _crazy_ about them, they are more her mother’s thing, yeah, being goddess of cereal and all but Pidge is more or less talented at it, letting things grow, playing with life as her fingers dig and cut and twirl.

Hunk, on the other hand, is a total disaster at gardening. He has a patience of steel and stubbornness to match so he tries and _tries_ and that’s how they met - Pidge wandering around the hills, hearing a lullaby and suddenly there was this big man, the God of The Dead, King of the Underworld singing to a bunch of soil while biting back tears.

To say her heart melted would have been an understatement.

He looked — he looked _lonely_ . So desperate for company, for _life_ that he resorted to sunflowers and weeds. And she got it - really really did, eons of life that isn’t life under her mother’s shadow, the Olympus nothing more than a golden cage made of hypocrisy and cheap sex and the dull, uninterested pat in her head every time she asked Zeus to _please, let me do something useful._

She stepped forwards, tore herself into his world, and taught him how to garden.

He blushed all the way through her energetic explanation, rich dark skin ( _so alive, much more alive than it’s supposed to for the king of the dead_ ) glowing blood red under the golden sunlight and she couldn’t help but wonder how he would look illuminated by the eerie darkness down there where he came from.

He was warm, though, in every sense of that damn word. He stepped back and intently listened to what she had to say - asking, smiling, retorting. None of that condescence she got every time with the other gods, none of the fearful awe humans stared her up with. He chipped back when she poked fun at him, sharp words gentle but honest, smile knowing and admiring. He looked at her as if saying _You might know best after all but let’s both try harder_ and what was supposed to be a few minutes of chit chat turned into hours filled with awe, laughter and thoughts firing everywhere. Those hours turned into night, pitch dark and when the clock from the small town below struck twelve, Hunk (he insisted on the nickname, more human, more alive, he said) raised his head and looked at her mournfully.

“I have to go back” he said and Pidge’s eyes traced the moonlight on his profile, the dirt on his hands, drinking him in. “I _really_ have to go back”

The look on his face spoke of how much he hated that idea.

“Stay” she heard herself saying and she couldn’t stop, not when she had found someone to match, someone just like her amidst  the chaos “You don’t have to go down there alone, you can just stay here, with the soil, with the plants, with...with…”

_With me._

_Stay with me._

Hunk’s eyes were glossy and he shook his head but Pidge could see it all, could see _him_.

“You want to stay” the words hang in the air. Hunk shook his head again and she feels herself choking with emotion. “You want the plants and the soil and you want…”

_Me._

The unspoken rang through her spine and she straightened, feeling herself making a decision.

And Hunk saw it too - how couldn’t he? - and he suddenly was on his feet, drying his tears with his toge, stepping back from her.

“Pidge, _no_ ”

“You don’t want to?”

He bit his lip.

“It’s not about what I want” His glare wasn’t icy, no, but stern and she felt it all through, making the earth quake, making her heartbeat raise. “It’s about what you deserve. And you certainly don’t deserve being down there, Pidge. You deserve sunlight, and warmth and life —-”

She felt rage like lightning.

“ _You_ don’t get to tell _me_ what I deserve, Hunk!” she roared. He looked taken aback, eyes glinting “And you don’t get to talk about your home like that”

He averted his eyes.

“Because isn’t it just that? Your home?” she felt herself softening, molten honey and dark skie. Her voice was lower when she added “But it gets lonely sometimes, doesn’t it. You feel alone…”

She paused again,looked up to the sky, where somewhere between the clouds golden bars crowned the Olympus.

“Alone, even amidst the crowd” she said and when she looked down, Hunk was staring at her, eyes wide open as if she might disappear any second, as if she might grow wings and fly far, far away.

Oh, no way between heavens and earth she would ever want to do that.

“Hunk” she called softly. He was brought out of his stupor, still a bumbling mess. Poor thing didn’t seem to know what to say, eyes wide, face flushed and then, _then_

“ _Marry me_ ” he blurted out, then seemed to hear himself and winced “I don’t—it’s not an order, of course. Just if you want to. And I know it seems sudden, ‘cause we met today but how sudden can it be, when Hercules married Megara upon meeting her? _Oh._ Bad example, I know. I just mean, all this gods and demigods marrying each other for lust or money and I guess…” he stopped, took air and looked her right in the eye “I guess I just want to marry someone like me. Someone I can understand, someone I can learn with, _someone I can_ …” he gulped, a millisecond of a pause in which Pidge’s heart is racing and the universe hangs from its axis and life and death meet “Someone I can love”

Oh.

“Hunk” she called. He raised his head anxiously, all his stern calm from before melting in nervous jitters.

“Yes? I’m sorry, was that too rushed? I don’t want to force you, it’s just if you want —”

“ _Hunk_ ”

“I couldn’t help myself, you just stood there looking so beautiful and you are so smart and funny and I felt like I hadn’t laughed like that in ages and I should have let you go but I selfishly _didn’t want to_ ”

“HUNK!” she shouted, making the man freeze and finally, _finally_ shut up. He looked wonderful amidst the darkness.

“Hunk” she repeated more calmly, letting put a soft smile to calm his fears “Don’t you have some fruit?”

“Really, you are _hungry_ in a moment like this?” he snarkily asked (but patted his clothes anyway).

Pidge raised an eyebrow in response. Hunk froze.

“Oh” his voice was small and she worried about him regretting his proposal, worried about somehow being too much, too quickly and then his face broke into a wide, glowing smile that shouldn’t have belonged to the king of the dead and _shouldn’t_ have made her smile back, full of fondness but here they were.

“Oh!” he repeated, loudly, voice filled with soft glee, unlimited joy (m _olten honey, dark skies_ ). “But are you sure?”

She extended her hand in answer.

 

♚♛

 

Pomegranate.

He had a pomegranate on his satchel — born and bred back in his home, on earth’s last breath. Underworld was earth’s last promise.

She couldn’t stop staring at the fruit with a sensation akin to awe. Was this how humans felt upon her presence? How she was supposed to feel every time she kneeled before Zeus’s throne?

Hunk’s hand trembled a bit, so dark against the bright, tantalizing red. Pidge’s eyes went from the fruit to him. He was looking at her calmly but behind his eyes, there was fear, fear of her turning back on her decision, fear of letting her down in the future, of being too much and _yet_ not being enough. Pidge had never been a good judge of emotions — she didn’t run by humans with wisdom or love, didn’t really come to achieve empathy that easily but she was sharp and stumbles upon the way had taught her to be a good judge of character, to discern between attractive lies and brutal truths.

So when she looked into his eyes, she saw fear, yes, but she also saw wonder and fondness and was wordlessly assured that he was absolutely earnest.

She touched her chest, hand hovering over the fruit in his hand, the ghost of his touch making all her senses tingle and she assured herself this was real — her heartbeat steady, life and death, heaven and earth and molten honey on her veins and skies dark above them.

She took the pomegranate. He kept his hand outstretched. Almost without words, they both knew what to do. The fruit wasn’t heavy on her hand. Instead, she found with delight that it had a smooth surface and blindly caressed it without breaking eye contact with Hunk in front of her.

His eyes were twinkling in almost childlike joy. She felt herself smile and, when she saw him smiling wide in response, Pidge noticed how close they were.

She broke the pomegranate in two.

Fresh, deep red juice started to pool on her hands and spill down her arms. She took a moment to watch it fall through her wrists like open veins before giving one slice to Hunk and stare in wonder at the liquid on his hands too, marvelling at the color on their skin. Gods don’t bleed red, she reminded herself, they bleed light and gold and stardust until they dry into nothing more than a well worn myth.

Silence hung between them as Psyche before wakefulness.

Hunk’s proximity was making Pidge’s head spin but somehow it also grounded her, made roots grow around the sole of her feet, where before homesickness had been the only resident.

The pomegranate seeds twinkled under the moonlight, full and red like a promise.

“How many will you take?” he whispered.

“I want to take all of them” she muttered back. She wasn’t looking at him now but she saw him shook his head.

“Not all your time. I don’t ask for even a minute of it” his voice was soft and she was relieved to find no more self deprecation. She still fired back

“Like I would do what you asked”

“Touché” he said with a knowing smile. Silence filled the moment again and Pidge couldn’t help to wonder.

“How many will you take?” she asked.

“As much as I can give” he said. Pidge furrowed her brow in thought.

“That doesn’t make much sense”

“Not for the seeds, no” he compromised and she understood. _She understood_.

She made her choice.

“Six.” her voice broke through the night, through the moonlight, through the skies they hid from “Six months for you and six for my family”

Her family. Her very much overprotective, loving goddess of a mother and her darling human father and brother, kept alive all this time only by the grace of the gods (and, she realised, by the refusal of Hades before her).

“Sounds only fair. Six, too, then”

He took six blood red seeds from the fruit and put them over his stretched palm. Waiting. He didn’t say any fancy words, any embellished phrase and neither did she. They didn’t need to. This was their own little sacred ritual.

She took six seeds from her own pomegranate with a grin and put them on her palm.

In a silent count, they both took them to their mouths. The taste was bittersweet — almost acrid — on her tongue and the juice from the seeds spilled on her mouth and down her face, probably dyeing her lips red just the way they dyed Hunk’s — but _gods_ , wasn’t it a glorious feeling of not completion but almost finally, finally coming home?

She held her stained palm for Hunk to hold while they gulped the fruit down and it was messy and red but doesn’t red hold life and death together in its string?

Hunk’s palm was warm and as they intertwined fingers in calm, awed silence, he squeezed her hand.

 _We are here_ he was saying _We are real._

Maybe because she wanted to, maybe because she could (husband and wife, queen and king, _partners_ ), maybe because to reassure themselves some more, she stepped forwards, closed the distance between them and kissed him, hands still slotted together against their chests.

Hunk let out a little sound - a wheeze, a surprised sigh, something she wouldn’t learn to decipher until many many kisses into their marriage- but kissed back fiercely, soft lips tasting like pomegranate, dirt and a promise to fulfill, over and over and _over_ for the rest of the eons.

Pidge, holding his hand more firmly between them, promised back.

 

♚♛

 

Of course, Pidge remembers with a little snort while cutting the plant’s dried flowers off, Olympus thought the worst of their little eloping. Her mother did, too, insisting over and over again to ask help if the oh-mighty-and-terrifying-underworld-king was holding her against Pidge’s will. It took a trip down to their castle, a batch of her husband’s cookies, a few slobbering plays of catch with each of Cerberus’s heads and a very _very_ loud scolding to Pidge for running away without warning for her mother to calm down and finally hug Hunk as one of the family.

“What are you giggling at?” Hunk quips behind her, voice amused as he hugs her small frame from behind. It still amazes her, all this time later, how gently he holds her, how well he fits against her — not like puzzle pieces but like two flowers from the same stem, recognizing each other in joyous _oh you are here, we are equal._

“I’m just reminiscing” she answers and let herself sink a bit into his embrace. Hunk simply hums.

“What?” she asks, turning her head to level him with a playful glare.

“Nothing. It’s just you were lecturing me on how to tend the forget-me-nots and you suddenly zoned out” he pauses to grin “It was cute”

She pokes his bicep.

“Shut up!”

“It was!”

“Did you learn something at least or did _you_ zone out while watching me work?”

He squirms a bit but keeps his voice still.

“I didn’t” he says.

Pidge smirks dangerously.

“You _so_ did”

“I did not” he insists and she sees a corner of his mouth twitch. He always laughs when he’s lying.

“Oh, you are a liar! Liar liar, pants on fire!” she singsons, poking him on the bicep again. This time, Hunk can’t contain his laughter.

“Ha!” She shouts victoriously. “Gotcha!”

“Okay! Okay! I did!” Hunk sobers up a bit but holds her tighter in mild revenge. Joke’s on him, she doesn’t mind one bit “What even _was_ that phrase? I was just watching you work and you stared _so intensely_ . Like when you organize the system’s paperwork. Downright _glare_ ”

“That’s because I’m trying to decipher your messy scrawl”  she fires half heartedly. Hunk shushes her with a kiss on the forehead.

“Like yours is any better” he quips with the same mild intensity then continues with his explanation “Anyway, you reminded me of our first year married…”

“Sap”

“... You rearranged the whole system! In record time! It was a bit messy before”

“Completely messed up”

“Okay, yes, completely messed up. I was so _impressed_. I was always better at physical engineering so yeah, I had left the programming a bit unattended. You turned all of that around. It was completely messed up before”

“Oh, we would have kept all those poor dead people waiting!” she chirps jokingly. Hunk’s semblant turns serious.

“We really would have” His eyes go a bit dark, no doubt remembering all the flaws in the system, all those lost souls waiting on the other side of the lake, always rejected by Kharon for lacking a coin or condemned to the wrong part of the Underworld by mistake.

Pidge lays off her teasing and smiles up at him softly, taking his hands on hers and holding them tightly.

“I know” she says. Then, to light up the mood “In your defense, you just needed to stop double writing data”

Hunk’s face - as always when brought up to the subject - scrunches in disgust.

“It catches mistakes more easier!”

“No, it makes you go slower!”

He buries his face in her hair to hide his smile. Too late, Pidge _knows_ he’s smiling.

“Do I have to run through you how to tend forget me nots again?”

“Probably. Do I have to teach you how to bake a chocolate cake again?”

Wincing when she recalls how she blew up the kitchen the last twenty times, she snorts through her answer.

“Probably. I know how to do bread now though”

“And _I..._ ” He can’t finish the thought, suddenly spinned around by his wife.

“ _You’ve_ planted your very own sunflowers” Pidge tells him, voice filled with pride as she touches his stubbled chin (he needs a shave) and turns it towards a spot in the middle of their underworld garden, where two fully bloomed sunflowers raise their faces up to the single ray of blood red light above them. Somewhere on earth, it’s dusk. The hour doesn’t matter, there’s always a sunset somewhere and that single light glows over their garden, over Hunk’s handiwork and Pidge’s patience in the form of this bright green, brown and yellow plants.

It seems like yesterday Pidge found this man crying over a pile of lifeless soil, cursing his destiny, convinced in the worst moments of his loneliness that all he could bring to the world was death.

It feels like yesterday and eons ago, all at the same time, when she was Kore and _Catalina_ and Katie and Pidge — young maiden of the gods, pure child of her human family, small, little, _inefficient thing_ — and then she chose. Six for her family. Pidge. Six for her husband. Queen of the Underworld. Persephone. Destroyer of Light. The one who wasn’t kidnapped but chose to free herself.

Hunk gently startles her out of her thoughts to lead her face until their foreheads are touching.

“You are right” he says softly “We’ve come so far”

Pidge breathes in underworld, life and life after death and rebirth. She breathes in and smells soil and the last ray of sunlight in the world and her husband besides her, holding her hand, molten honey in their veins and dark skies upon them.

Pidge breathes in and smells _home_.

“Yeah” she whispers “We have”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you read this, I'd appreciate a comment with your feedback! I'm very proud of this piece and I'd love to hear how does it feel on the other side <3


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